Zimbabwe opposition makes a deal

By CELIA W. DUGGER THE NEW YORK TIMES

Saturday

Jan 31, 2009 at 12:01 AM

After months of resisting intense pressure from leaders across southern Africa, Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, announced Friday that he would do as the leaders have insisted and join a power-sharing government as prime minister with his longtime nemesis, President Robert Mugabe.

The opposition party's decision to join the government was made unanimously at a meeting of its leadership in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital.

It will usher in a new phase in the opposition's decade-long struggle against 84-year-old Mugabe and his almost 30-year grip on power -- a grip he tightened after claiming victory in a bloody, discredited presidential run-off election against Tsvangirai in June.

"There was jubilation and ululation, singing and dancing," said party spokeswoman Thabitha Khumalo, describing the reaction of party leaders to the decision to join the government.

Tsvangirai now faces the daunting job of reviving Zimbabwe's moribund economy and rescuing an increasingly famished, sick and impoverished population with a partner, Mugabe, whose security forces have viciously beaten Tsvangirai and thousands of his supporters over the past two years and abducted and allegedly tortured dozens more in just the last few months.

But after more than four months of deadlock and uncertainty following Tsvangirai's signing of a power-sharing deal with Mugabe, his followers reacted with hope that he might be able to stop the country's accelerating downward spiral.

He climbed on the hood of a car outside Harvest House, headquarters of the opposition party, Movement for Democratic Change, and told a cheering throng who had jammed the street of the party's decision.

The challenges are monumental, and the distrust of Mugabe is so deep that it is uncertain whether the United States and European nations will lift sanctions and infuse substantial new aid for the reconstruction of Zimbabwe until they have solid evidence that he will agree to sweeping changes in the country's disastrous economic policies, the restoration of the rule of law and democracy.

The suffering in Zimbabwe worsens by the day. The World Health Organization announced Friday that a rampant cholera epidemic, far from under control, has infected more than 60,000 people and killed more than 3,100 since August.

And the U.N. World Food Program announced Thursday that the economic crisis has worsened so suddenly and sharply that the number of people needing food aid in the next two months has risen to 7 million from 5 million of the country's 12 million people.

The United Nations agency is cutting its monthly rations -- already insufficient -- in half to 5 kilograms, or 11 pounds, of corn per person, hoping the hungry can scavenge enough in wild fruits and other foods to survive until the next harvest.

"People will certainly be more malnourished and vulnerable to disease than if they were getting a full ration," said a spokesman Richard Lee.

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